Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

A little celebration is in order. I have finished writing up my Snowflake analysis of my next project. Now I can start writing the sample chapters and book proposal and send it to my agent! It took me just about a month to write that Snowflake, which is a lot of time, but it probably saved me three or four months downstream. I would have got it done quicker, but a high-priority interruption came in that I had to deal with–it was an opportunity that rarely comes along and I jumped on it. So that Snowflake would have taken about two and a half weeks under ordinary circumstances. Time well spent!

Christophe wrote:

How do you edit a chapter that has been rewritten ten times? A chapter that you can’t get a clear view of anymore because you have all the ghosts of the previous versions haunting your brain. It’s been rewritten so much you can’t make out anymore if it’s good or bad or somewhere in between.

Randy sez: The answer depends on the context. If this the only chapter you’ve written on this book, then move on. Write the rest of the book. You’ll likely end up throwing away Chapter 1 anyway, or radically revising it later on, when you know the story better.

If, however, this is that one ugly duckling chapter that is killing the entire book, it’s time to zoom out and analyze your story a bit. What’s the big picture for your story? What’s the Three Act Structure? How does this scene fit into that structure? Do you really need the scene, or is it just fluff? If it’s fluff, kill it. If you really need it, and all previous attempts to fix it have failed, here is a radical suggestion: Read the entire book up to that scene (all in one sitting, if possible). Then write that scene fresh (not a revision of the old crap, which you already know doesn’t work). Write it fresh and see if it doesn’t just work better after getting a running start by reading the story just like a reader would.

A side note: I went to my monthly critique group last night, which meets in a Barnes & Noble near me. Naturally, after the meeting, I “paid the rent” by buying a couple of books. One of them is NEXT, by Michael Crichton, which I have been reading off and on all day during breaks in my schedule. And I have still NOT figured out who the main character is in this novel. I’m not sure there is a main character. That’s too bad, because the writing is pretty strong. But I don’t know who to root for. So the novel is not as strong as the writing (at least not for me).

D.E. Hale wrote:

In writing a trilogy, do I need to do one GIANT snowflake for the ENTIRE story, or just each book, or both? What’s the best way to go about that.

If the trilogy is a single story (like LORD OF THE RINGS) then you probably do. (Tolkien actually wrote LOTR by the seat of his pants. He had no idea who Strider was when he walked on stage.) If the three stories can stand alone, you can probably get away with Snowflaking each book on its own. I am starting work on a series now, but I am only Snowflaking the first book. I know more or less what the next several books will be about, but I don’t have the details.

For those of you who’ve read the entire Harry Potter series, it is obvious that JK Rowling had the whole story in mind from the beginning of book one. I doubt she did a Snowflake, but she clearly did a lot of planning on the complete series as a single unit and she knew her characters’ backstories and how those would drive the series.

On to some of that backlog of questions that we posed to Renni Browne:
Holly wrote:

My question: How do I know when I’ve over-edited and the prose is too spare? I write tight to begin with and pare down to make every word carry its weight. Because of this I have shorter scenes and chapters, and a lot of them. I harp on myself to keep the explanation within the action and dialogue (R.U.E.!), not the prose-but I worry that I’ve then left too much to the imagination and the piece is not understandable to anyone without a literary magnifying glass. (What do I do?) Okay, another question: Once I cut out a lot of the flab, I’m left with a long series of very short paragraphs. Is this a no-no, and if it is, is there any way to remedy the situation?

Renni answered: I’ll take the easy question first. You often see very short paragraphs in thrillers, but occasionally they do work in other types of fiction. They can also look or feel weird. Nonstop dialogue, for example, can be exhausting to read if it runs on long enough–it needs to be broken up with beats, interior monologue, a bit of description, etc. Also, if you have very short non-dialogue paragraphs in succession, consider following them pretty quickly with longer ones. As for your other question, overediting is a real danger. My best advice is that you pay careful attention to what you own instincts are telling you. You may already know you’re going too far–that may be why you asked the question. Do you feel that the prose isn’t rich, is too “bare bones,” doesn’t satisfy? Cutting flab is good, leaving things to the reader’s imagination is very good because it gets readers to invest a little piece of themselves in your story, involving them in it at a deeper level. But you have to make it possible for them to do that, and they can’t if you’ve left out too much, if you haven’t given them enough to work with. Again, what do your instincts tell you? They’re more reliable, of course, if you’ve put the manuscript aside for a while.

Randy adds: There are different kinds of writers. There are those who write lean and those who write rich, and you need to decide what kind you are. I naturally write pretty lean, so I don’t try to edit too hard or there’d be nothing left. In fact, when I edit, I tend to add in stuff. But writers who lay on the adjectives and adverbs thick to begin with–those are the ones who need to edit hard and trim out the fat. It sounds like you tend toward the lean already, so take it easy with that red pencil!

More on self-editing tomorrow.

We’re getting toward the end of our series of questions on self-editing, which our guest expert Renni Browne is answering. As many of you know, Renni wrote the book on self-editing and runs a leading editing service.

I’ll start by responding to a couple of comments from today:

Darcie wrote:

I just jumped in and read all the posts on this topic and the question about hiring a professional editor still niggles me: Can a first-time author really recoup the cost?

It depends a LOT where you are in the process. If you are a beginning writer (what I call a Freshman), then you should be frugal. Buy some books on writing, go to a local one-day writing conference, invest in an inexpensive course such as Fiction 101, etc. I don’t advise spending a lot of money, because you don’t know for sure yet that you really have the writing bug and the persistence required to become a published author.

By the time you’re a Junior or a Senior, you KNOW you have the writing bug and you have quit asking unanswerable questions such as “Do I have talent?” (Talent is good, but it is over-rated. Persistence, a good work ethic, and raw emotive force are more important.) By your Junior year, you are probably going to a good (and expensive) conference every year. Somewhere between your Junior and Senior year, it may well be cost-effective to start working with a good freelance editor.

Be clear on this: a freelance editor can’t make something out of nothing. You need to develop your skills a bit first. Once you’ve done that and you’re getting close to publishable, then’s the time to take your writing to that pesky next level. I didn’t hire my first free-lance editor until my third novel. I probably should have started sooner, but my first two novels got published and won awards without an editor.

This is just a fact of life: Writing fiction is an expensive hobby that often doesn’t pay very well. We all know the exceptions, the Tom Clancys and Nora Roberts and J.K. Rowlings of the world who make big bucks. But these are the EXCEPTIONS. Most novelists have a day job. That’s just a sad fact that is due to the fact that the universe is unfair. Deal with that and resolve to take actions now to beat the odds.

Christophe wrote:

I’m kind of thinking though, that you totally missed my question. It was the first one that got asked on self-editing and I think you probably missed it.

It’s no big deal and I certainly don’t want any favoritism, but it’s a question that’s been really burning in my mind and I have no idea who else to ask it to.

Randy sez: Oops! It’s entirely possible that I missed it. A lot of questions came in. Go ahead and post it again here as a comment. My apologies!

Camille wrote:

There are changes I want to make to some of the conversations and events in what’s written so far before I CAN continue writing the rest of the story (the changes will affect what I’m currently writing and I’m afraid I’ll forget or it won’t make sense to me later at re-write stage). But I AM CERTAIN that if I go back into those chapters, I’ll get sucked into editing stuff that I should leave alone for now. I have inserted some track changes comments, but it’s better if I stay out of the ms entirely. So I took the time to make a new brief outline of the chapters so far showing the additions and changes and I hope to follow THIS instead of getting sucked back into the ms. We’ll see if it works. Any advice would be appreciated.

Renni answered: I don’t see how an outline is going to keep you from having an idea (and then executing a change) that isn’t in the outline, but hey, whatever works. Otherwise? It sounds to me as if you’re too close to the story. I think your assessment of your situation is astute; I also think your smart option is professional feedback. You want to make your novel as good as it can possibly be. You can’t do that without going back into it, and you know yourself well enough to realize that this will set off a whole new round of additions and deletions and second-guessing yourself. An experienced, objective take on what you’ve got and what it could be might not only be just what the novel needs, it might make you actually enjoy being back in the manuscript.

Randy adds: Camillie, if I’m not mistaken, you’re still working on your first novel, right? Given that, I’d say, forge ahead and finish the beast! Use that outline of yours, keep moving forward, and prove to yourself that you can finish a book you started. That’ll give you a tremendous sense of accomplishment and confidence that you can edit the thing. Then go back and look at the high-level issues. If you have a critique buddy, get her advice.

A lot of writing conferences offer paid critiques by published authors for $25 or so. That can be a good investment if it shows you some consistent problems in your writing. When I was close to selling my first novel, I asked a friend of mine who happened to be a NY Times best-selling novelist to read a couple of chapters. She graciously did it for free (this was at a writing conference, and she was a friend, not somebody I approached out of the blue). I still have her hand-written comments of those chapters. Even those few pages exposed 2 or 3 consistent errors I was making in my writing. I identified the problems and then fixed the other 300+ pages of the manuscript. Not long after that, I sold that book.

I won’t tell you the name of this friend, because I don’t want to see her deluged with requests for free critiques. You should only ask friends for free critiques, and you should NOT make friends with people solely to get them to critique your work. Make friends with people whom you intend to be a friend to. If you can help them or they can help you, that’s frosting on the friendship cake.

We’re continuing to discuss self-editing for fiction writers.

Aly wrote:

Ms. Browne’s example of fighting her inner editor while writing her latest article comforts me, because I often have the same struggle. My inner editor is very strong-willed and hard to resist for long. However, I’ve found some ways to work with my inner editor rather than fighting it. In case anyone else has this problem, I’d like to share my strategy: When I’m tempted by the urge to micro-edit (grammar, word choice, etc.) while writing my rough draft, I just jot down editing notes in the margin if I’m hand-writing the draft, or if I’m typing, I’ll put a comment in brackets after the related sentence or word.

Randy sez: I do something similar in Microsoft Word when I’m writing first draft material and don’t want to be stopped in my tracks by possible logic problems or research needs. So I’ll just insert a Comment that says something like: “Logic problem: Does this make sense?” or maybe “Research question: What sort of food would they eat for this holiday?” Then I just keep on typing the story without losing any momentum.

Later, when it’s time to edit, I just use the View Comments feature and there are all the comments. Click on each one and it takes you direct to the place in your manuscript where there’s an issue. The Comment itself tells you what the issue was. Fix the issue, erase the Comment, and you’re done.

Camille wrote:

Anyway, I have learned so much here and through books on writing, now I realize 90% of what I’ve learned is about polishing and perfecting the prose. I GET perfecting, that’s part of the package here. But I feel like I’ve skipped over a foundational part of learning to write…the creative part.

So I guess I’m not an artist, after all. ACK!! I find that I’m a thinker, not a storyteller. My themes and ideas are much better than my writing.

I think I need to unlock the creative side, or something. I wonder if I should take a local college writing course, the kind where they lock you in a psychedelic room with an odd assortment of objects to look at and pipe in classical music and make you write non-stop whatever comes into your head. Do they still do that? Maybe they outlawed it.

Randy sez: Everybody is different, and you don’t have to try to fit somebody else’s pattern. If you read the Dean Koontz interview recently on the Novel Journey blog, you know that Dean does an awful lot of rewriting as he writes. He basically doesn’t move on until the page is perfect. Works for him. It would kill most of us. Find what works for you.

As for unlocking your inner creator, here’s an old exercise that I’ve heard recommended for getting those creative juices flowing: Time yourself for five minutes and write one long sentence on any old topic you feel like. Don’t worry if it’s lousy. It’s supposed to be lousy. Just don’t stop typing. Shoot for the maximum possible word-count. A nonsensical sentence is fine, just type!

You can also do this in your head (and you’ll find you can think a lot more words in five minutes than you can type.)

PatriciaW asked Renni Browne:

There are so many aspects of editing (spelling and grammar, word choice/usage, sentence structure, theme, etc.) What order would you suggest attacking them in?

Renni answered: Which issues are most troublesome to you? You could always knock them off in descending order, starting with the thorniest.

Randy adds: Start with the big picture and get that working first. Then work down to the middle picture and the little picture. Discerning readers will know that I discussed how to analyze these in Fiction 101 and Fiction 201.

Kathryn asked Renni Browne:

What is the difference when editing a short story versus a novel? What do you trim in a short story that you normally wouldn’t in a novel? How do you decide what’s too much or too little when the story is so much smaller? Currently, I have two finished short stories and one novel under serious construction.

Renni answered: In a novel, as in a short story, you want to cut what doesn’t add or enhance, what isn’t special, what in any way undermines your good stuff. But if you leave something in a novel that really shouldn’t be there, it’s less exposed. In a short story you can’t get by with a word or phrase that doesn’t belong. As to how you make the judgment calls, I’d definitely recommend professional feedback. Short stories are short, so it wouldn’t cost much. Again, your manuscript is your child, so you’re almost certainly too close to it to be 100% objective.

Randy adds: I don’t do a lot of short stories, but I’ve found them extremely challenging. I put in much LESS effort on pre-planning a short story. (I don’t Snowflake it, I just sketch out a few ideas and then write it.) However, I put in much MORE effort in editing the thing. A short story has no room for fluff. Every sentence has to count. In a novel, a sentence can be showing the StoryWorld or displaying the Characters or advancing the Plot or expounding on the Theme. In a short story, every sentence should be doing double-duty; it should be contributing to two of those simultaneously. That’s what makes it hard.

It’s not so much a matter of what to cut as how to make each sentence hold more without adding any extra words.

Tune in again tomorrow, when we tackle more questions on self-editing.

Hi All: We are continuing to work through Renni Browne’s answers to some of the questions you all posted on the subject of self-editing. Since Monday is a holiday here in the US, this will be a slightly lighter day than normal.

Gerhi Janse van Vuuren asked:

I’m writing a Nanowrimo novel so the editor is off at the moment. But I will have a draft in about a months time. The standard advice seem to be to let the draft lie for a time (a week, a month) before picking it up again. But I know from experience (academic writing) that when I get to the end of a draft I already know about a ton of things I want to fix. Should I still let it lie or immediately fix the things that I feel needs fixing?

Renni answered: Sounds like you can have it both ways. Jump on the things you know you want to fix and then let it lie.

Randy adds: It’s good to let it lie for a bit. That’s a good time to get your critiquers/reviewers/editor to work it over, while you do something different. However, you don’t always have that luxury, especially when you get in the publishing pipeline and are producing book after book on deadline. So then you may want to start revising immediately, even while you wait to get answers back.

Anna asked:

On Self-Editing: What are the major points to work on? I have been writing a lot over the past few days, but I feel like I’m going too fast on the actual book. I feel like the most important characters aren’t coming out right. I feel like the story is going too fastSlike I’m rushing it. In self-editing, do you worry about grammar and spelling? I generally don’tSthat really doesn’t seem to be the most important part to meSbut what about the other stuff? When you read over your chapters AGAIN, do you polish the sentences and dialogue? Edit out the worst scenes? Rewrite as you go? Basically, do you edit and write at the same time.

Renni answered: When you’re writing a draft, let it flow and lock the editor out of the room. I say this somewhere in the book, but I should have put it on page one. Writing and editing come from two different halves of the brain–writing, of course, being a right-brained activity. Now. Having said that, I’ll admit that the last piece I wrote–an article on “What Editors (Really) Do” that’s up at www.editorialdepartment.com — I found myself several times writing a sentence and then, as I started the next one, realizing that the preceding sentence would have much more impact if I changed a word or a phrase to such-and-such. But at the same time I was having this thought, I’d be finishing the new sentence in my head. Aaaaargh. With me it was a shouting match and I went with whichever voice was loudest. I stand by my advice nonetheless. Do your best to let the first draft flow unimpeded by critical thoughts, which can (a) stop the flow, or (b) undermine what’s coming out in sneakier ways. (”That’s lousy, you know.”) When you let prose flow, it may be rough, it may even be lousy in one way or another, but it may also have energy or bite or surprise it would never have if you fussed with it while it’s coming out.

Randy adds: I’ve found that the creative part of writing is very chaotic and unpredictable and unrepeatable. (If you’ve ever LOST a great piece that you slammed out in a white heat of passion, you know very well that you can’t redo it the next day. You’ll get something the second time, but it won’t be the same.)

However, the editing part of writing is very predictable and repeatable. I’ve sometimes edited the same piece of work twice (by accident, because I thought I’d lost my edited pages, only to find them later on after I edited the whole thing AGAIN). And I’ve found that my edits were pretty darn close both times. Not exact, but pretty repeatable.

So if you’re slamming out your story and you feel tempted to fix that broken sentence with the glaring typo, think twice. If you edit it tomorrow, you’re almost certain to fix it the same then that you would now. But if you lose your train of thought, can you get it back? Maybe not. So that’s what I remind myself when I’m tempted to edit while creating.

Sometimes I do edit while I’m creating, of course. I do that on the days when the words just aren’t screaming off my fingertips and it really won’t hurt to lose my train of thought, because it’s just a toy train anyway. But on those rare golden days when I can’t type fast enough to get the story on the page, well, I’d be crazy to fix the spelling errors. On those days, I let it rip. You really can fix it tomorrow.

Hi All: As promised, I’ve now got the answers to a number of questions that you all submitted to Renni Browne by posting comments on this blog a few days ago.

As most novelists know, Renni Browne is the co-author of “Self-Editing For Fiction Writers,” which is the bible of self-editing for fiction writers. If there is any book that is required reading for a novelist, this is it. Renni is all the founder of The Editorial Department, a renowned team of freelance editors. Check them out to see the company that defines great editing.

Let’s look at a few of the questions you submitted.

Lynda wrote:

It seems craft is like peeling the proverbial onion, always more to learn. How do I know when to quit revising?

Renni answered: Oh, dear. The answer to this one depends so much on your level of confidence. I can say that many writers get to an Aha! By which I mean, a stage where they have a feeling–however shaky, however fleeting–”This is good, this is what I was trying for.” If you get that feeling upon reading a heavily revised draft, stop messing with it. Also, professional feedback at this point can be invaluable.

Randy adds: There are two kinds of writers who have this sort of feeling–Freshmen and Seniors. It goes without saying that Freshmen who get this feeling are delusional. It’s a sweet delusion, of course. I remember thinking my writing was brilliant, Pulitzer-ready, staggering-genius work when I was a Freshman. It turned out to be crap, and I’ve never had that feeling again, but it was nice while it lasted.

Now Seniors will get a similar feeling, but it’s a bit more mature. It’s the feeling you get when you’ve hit a thousand baseballs and you whack one especially well, and you know even before you see it fly over the fence that you’ve parked this one, baby. It’s an intuition, and it comes from experience. Be aware that Seniors can also be delusional, but about half the time, they’re not. Hence the need to get a second opinion.

Rob wrote:

I love, love, love “Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.” One area the book doesn’t cover, though, (and which I’d love to hear more about from Ms. Browne) is macro-editing. Are there any techniques or tips for large-scale novel editing? Tangled plots? Weak characters? Broken structure? I can really dig into scene-by-scene editing, but big-picture editing is a nightmare. I have a few novel-length manuscripts languishing on my hard drive because I don’t know how to tackle the large-scale editing needed to make them work.

Renni answered: Most writers don’t find books all that helpful in this area. What helps is feedback, and — it has to be said — by all means get professional feedback if you can afford it. At The Editorial Department we’ve been critiquing plot, characters, and style for $2.00 a page, making specific suggestions in all these areas, since I founded the company 27 years ago. If you can’t go this route, you may get lucky with a teacher, a writer, even a friend who reads a lot of fiction and is willing to tell you the truth as opposed to what you want to hear. Nonprofessional feedback is risky, though. Professional feedback is sought by very good writers (many of them published) for the most elemental of reasons: Your book is your child, and who among us can be 100% objective about our children? As an editor for T.E.D. I’m not doing anything different from what I did when I was an editor at Scribner’s or Stein & Day or Morrow in the 60’s or 70’s. But publishing house editors (with very rare exceptons) don’t do what I do any more. Manuscripts that need editing–which is virtually all manuscripts, especially first novels–just get rejected. And they don’t get rejected by the publishing editors, who never get to see them, they get rejected by the literary agents writers approach, knowing that publishing editors won’t read them unless they’re agented.

Randy adds: The first time I hired a freelance editor to work over my manuscript, I thought I couldn’t afford it. (This was my third published novel, so I had written my first couple and edited them with only the help from the publishing editors.) But what I discovered is that freelance editors are gold. I learned an amazing amount by reading those hundreds and hundreds of detailed comments from my freelancer. Since then, I’ve worked with freelance editors on virtually every book I’ve done. And a lot of my published novelist friends do the same.

Having said that, I’ll also say that on the macro-editing, I still get a lot of bang for my buck by using the Snowflake method to solve the structural problems. It is not unusual for me to revise my Snowflake through about four versions before and during the first draft of a novel. Then when I’ve run it past my freelance editor, I’ll tweak the Snowflake up again before I do any revisions. And after my publishing editor has given me comments, the first thing I do is revise the Snowflake again. (It’s much easier to revise a 40 page Snowflake document than a 400 page manuscript.)

We’ll continue tomorrow with more questions and more answers. See ya then!

I have received answers back today from Renni Browne to the questions you all submitted. I am going to start posting those here tomorrow, when I catch my breath. (After yesterday’s e-zine, I’ve had a LOT of email today and have been answering it all till late, so tonight is going to be a light blog night, with just a few answers to your latest comments):

Pam wrote:

okay ~ the first question that popped in my mind is how do you know if an idea is publishable? Do you talk about it with someone in the industry or do you have a gut feeling?

Randy sez: You never KNOW if it’s publishable. You have to go on your BELIEFS. If you believe your idea is publishable, then work on it. If you ever stop believing in it, then quit and switch to something else. If you have doubts, get a second and third opinion from writers you respect. Don’t trust non-writing friends! What do they know about it?

Lynn wrote:

Pam, that is my question too. With my current WIP I’ve had mixed comments about whether it is publishable/marketable. Those that have read portions say yes and those that just look at the query say no. I guess the query is the problem. Nonetheless I’m not so naive to think it is a best seller or that it meets the needs/wants of the general market, but my gut is that it is a story some will read. If I go by what my critique group says I would persevere - If I go by the word of on honorable literary agent I’d drop it like a hot potato and move on. Yet in my heart, I think it is worth the effort.

Randy sez: Then keep on keeping on! You can get all the advice you can stomach, but at the end of the day, it’s what your heart says that matters. If it’s just a bad query letter, then fix the query. How long could that take? A day?

Mary wrote:

Stein recommends avoiding going through from beginning to end much because the writer gets weary of it. Have you found that to be a problem? If I take a little break in between, I can come back fresh and get excited about my book again–no matter how many times I’ve read it so far. I know when my own writing engages me and evokes tears, etc., it has something because it can still offer that P.E.E. to someone who knows it well.

Randy sez: For all new-comers to this blog, “P.E.E.” is a Powerful Emotional Experience, which is what you should be striving to create in your reader. My own policy is to finish the first draft, then read the whole thing through as fast as possible and make notes on what works and what doesn’t (the Big Picture). Then I’ll work though it all slowly, fixing every little thing, and using my Big Picture notes to help fix the big problems. When I hate the book so much that I vomit on sight of it, then it’s perfect and should go to my editor.

I should note that even before I read the whole thing myself, I send it to my freelance editor to tell me what’s good and what ain’t. I’ve found that my writing either sings or stinks; unfortunately, I can’t tell the difference, so I need my freelancer to tell me which is which. And since she’s not a Manly Guy, I can count on her to tell me what parts will appeal (or not) to the Womanly Reader. I’m always surprised by what she tells me.

D.E. Hale wrote:

I mean, I’ve spent several years completing the stupid things, and now my husband is going to think I’ve gone nuts if I tell him that I need to rewrite them again.

Randy sez: I sympathize with you on that. I worked on my first book for two and a half years. Then I went to a writing conference, met a new writing buddy, and one of his comments really hit home for me. I realized that the book was unpublishable. So I quit. Right then, right there. I KNEW it could not be published. My wife was really mad and asked who this guy was, that he could derail years of my work. My answer was that I wasn’t derailing it on account of my friend’s opinion; I was derailing it because his words were true, and I knew they were true. It wasn’t his opinion, it was mine. But I took action as soon as I knew the problem was fatal. I don’t waste time when I make a decision. I just act.

Greg wrote:

I wasn’t happy with my project. After reading it with a more objective eye, I realize it just wasn’t very good or interesting. I think the story is a good one. I can write better from the first person perspective. I want to start over from the central character’s voice. However, I will lose two of the characters in the process.

My question is, should I scale back my storyline to make the writing more engaging or should I force myself to learn to write from the omniscient third person? This is a hard choice for me.

Randy sez: You definitely don’t want to use omniscient point of view. But I’m not sure what you mean by omniscient third person. Third person is perfectly fine, and it’s the most common viewpoint. We talked a lot about viewpoint here a few months ago. And of course my Fiction 101 and Fiction 201 courses go into point of view in a nicely organized way.

I’m not sure how to advise you here, not having seen the work. You might want to get the advice of a writer friend or show it to someone at a writing conference. Be aware that it’s common for a writer to not write very well on the first book. It often takes a few tries to find your voice and get your stride.

I have gone through all the questions on self-editing that some of you have posted here in the last few days and have picked out the actual questions and sent them off to Renni Browne. So when I hear back from her, I’ll start posting her answers here.

Some of you have been speculating on the secret project I’m working on. Not my choice to keep it secret. It’s somebody else’s secret. I mention it because it’s been consuming enormous amounts of my time, and I felt I owed you all some explanation of why I have had little blogging energy the last few days. Things are just about finished on this thing. I wrapped up the hard part today. Tomorrow, I have to finish the harder part, and then that’ll be the end of things. In a couple of months, all will be revealed. Again, that’s not my choice–it’s been imposed on me.

Let me give you my initial thoughts on self-editing:

I’m a lazy cuss and I hate working harder than I have to. So I try my best not to work on something that will be thrown away. Some examples:

If I know the novel is unpublishable, I refuse to work on it anymore. I’d rather work on an idea that I think is publishable. It saps my energy to be pouring time down a rathole.

If I know that the story structure is wrong, (but the novel is a good concept), then I fix that first. I refuse to revise a chapter which is likely to get thrown out. And if the story structure is wrong, a lot of chapters are going to get thrown out.

Once I have fixed the story structure, then I ask which chapters are in and which are out. I write new chapters to replace the deleted ones, because I want the whole story in place. Then I read the whole thing and take notes.

Once I know that I have all the chapters that I’m going to need, I work through them all in order, revising it. I make sure the scene structure is right and that I know the conflicting agendas of the main characters in the scene.

Once I think a scene is structured right, then I edit the thing line by line. I’m not going to discuss what that entails today.

Like I said, I’m lazy and I don’t want to edit a scene that might get chucked. Life is too short for that. Get the big picture right first, then the middle picture, then the little picture. And if that sounds like the Snowflake method, that’s because it is. I use the Snowflake to edit my work and it’s every bit as useful there as when I designed the beast in the first place.

Tuesday is E-zine Day, so I’ll be busy on that all day and will not blog tomorrow night. Wednesday, I’ll blog again.

See ya then!

I’m writing this late Sunday night and I’m tired. It’s been a LONG weekend. I’ve been working really hard for several days now on a secret project that I can’t talk about yet. Which is too bad, because I’d dearly love to blab, but I can’t just yet. I hope to have something to tell you about in a couple of months. This thing has chewed up ALL my free time and more than all of my energy for most of the last week. I’m almost done, but am now in an advanced state of frazzle.

We’re going to start a new series of blogs here on “Best Practices in Self-Editing.” I’ve been collecting questions from you all and will forward those on to Renni Browne, one of the authors of the famous book, “Self Editing for Fiction Writers.” But tonight, I’m just too tired to do all that.

I’m looking at all your comments for the last few days and I saw one by Camille:

Thanks Randy, who DON’T you know?

Randy sez: There are a lot of people I don’t know. However, I’m generally not afraid to send people an email out of the blue. It helps to be running an e-zine with 10,000+ readers. That tends to give me some credibility.

OK, I’m really tired and I’m heading to bed now. I’ve got a bit of work to do tomorrow on this infamous secret project and then I’ll send it in and we’ll see what happens. I would tell you more about this if I could, but I can’t. I am REALLY enjoying this secrecy thing.

I’ll try to wrap up today on my comments on your action plans. In the meantime, keep posting comments with your questions on self-editing. I’ll send those off to Renni Browne (author of “Self-Editing For Fiction Writers”) over the weekend and we’ll start discussing those next week.

Some of you noted that the email notification didn’t come today. I posted my blog after midnight yesterday, and that may be the reason.

Yvette wrote:

The most important thing that has happened to me, my mindset has changed, and am very optimistic about my future.

Randy sez: Your mindset is the main thing. If you can believe you can do something, they you are about 60% of the way there already. That’s no guarantee you’ll make it. But it’s a requirement. If you don’t think you can make it, then you have almost no chance.

Sheila wrote:

I can’t influence the getting published bit, but I can commit to sending at least one item to at least one person per week. So now I’m not “trying and failing.” I’m doing something about it.

Randy sez: Exactly! If you take actions directed toward your goal, and then watch what happens as a result, and then take new actions using what you learned, you’ll get better.

Bonne laid out a very detailed and extensive action plan and then concluded:

That’s the plan. It’s a little intimidating to see it all in a row like this, but at the same time amazing to see how far I’ve made it down the list in the last 6 months

Randy sez: Yes, if you look back every once in a while, you’ll be amazed at what you’ve done when you took consistent action. Just take one thing at a time on that list, and execute. It does take a lot of time, but time is what we all have stretching ahead of us. In the next ten years of your life, you have . . . ten whole years to get stuff done. If you don’t bother to do anything, you’ll spend those ten years doing a whole lot of nothing. If writing is worth doing, then it’s worth investing a sizeable chunk of that ten years in.

Debbie wrote:

I woke up 9/19/07 with a story idea. In the last month it has been Snowflaked, and has grown to 30K. If I can keep up my pace of 7K a week, it will be ready for editing by Christmas.

Randy sez: Yow! That’s what I like to see! Action! It may succeed or it may fail. But inaction is ALWAYS going to fail.

Ron wrote:

On the business end of things, the way I understand it is that here in the U.S., expenses for writing, such as computer, printer, office supplies, contest submission fees, etc. can be written off on taxes (Form 1040 Schedule C) so long as your intent is to make money from your writing (but you don’t actually have to show that you are making money) and you don’t have to have a business license. (Randy can probably confirm/correct this)

Randy sez: Always check with your tax advisor on these things. The rules are a little complicated, and I’ve learned not to give out tax advice. But if you qualify for tax deductions for your writing expenses, it can be pretty significant. Just ask that pesky tax advisor!

To all of you doing NaNoWriMo, good luck! Set your goals, make an action plan, and then do it!

Remember, post your questions on self-editing your fiction here. We have a world class expert to help us learn more–Renni Browne. Let’s learn all we can from her!

We will soon be moving on to a new topic, which was #2 on the list of my blog readers’ major interests: “Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.”

I have a nice surprise for you all. We’ll have a guest expert on to answer many of your questions. I’ll still be here adding in my nosy little bit, but you’ll have the advantage of hearing from an expert who knows far more than I do:

Renni Browne will be our expert. Renni is known around the world as the author of “Self-Editing for Fiction Writers,” which she co-authored with Dave King. This is one of the “must have” book on my list of recommended books for novelists.

If you don’t have “Self-Editing for Fiction Writers,” you can check it out on Amazon. Take a look at all those 5-star Amazon reviews! I own a copy and virtually every published novelist I know owns one too. It’s that good.

Go ahead and post your questions here as a comment on this blog. I’ll collect the questions and forward them to Renni. She’ll answer them and I’ll post them back here in groups of 2 or 3, alongside my own blithering commentary. I think we’ll have fun.

Many of you know that Renni Browne heads a major editing service, The Editorial Department. This is one of the premier editing services in the world, as you can well imagine. I won’t belabor this point, but I know that at any given time, some of you are looking for editing services. Check out The Editorial Department to see if they might meet your needs. They also have an e-zine, which you can subscribe to for free on the web site.

I’d like to respond to a few more comments that you all have posted in the last few days.

Anna wrote:

I try not to work on more than one project at once, but there are several times that I have wondered if I could pull of writing two books at one time. Basically my action plan is to keep writing this one until I’m sick of it and it’s as perfect as I can get it. I hope to finish it early next year…do you recommend writing more than one project at a time?

Randy sez: Professional writers often have multiple projects going. They also have 40+ hours per week to spend on their projects. Most pre-published writers are lucky to have 10 or 20 hours per week. Because of that, I recommend focusing on one project at a time. It’s not a hard/fast rule, but it makes a lot of sense to me.

Like the Simpleology guy says: “See your target clearly. Keep it in your sights. Keep hitting it (until you hit it).” That is sound advice for anything, and especially for fiction writing.

Mary wrote:

Randy, as you know I’ve been learning A LOT about the marketing end of writing. I posted about all the stuff I’ve mastered these past few months here: http://aratus.typepad.com/tma/2007/10/pebble-turning-.html

Because of what I’ve learned (and boy did that involve a LOT of action and trying things I’ve never tried before), I am much more efficient in this part of my writing.

Randy sez: Bravo, Mary! I’ve been watching the development of your brand and your marketing strategy on your web site. You go, RelevantGirl!

We’ll look at a few more of your comments tomorrow, while you give me your questions for the queen of self-editing, Renni Browne.

Post your questions on self-editing here now!